2009 – Bookmarked!

Flippers name their best and worst for 2009

After a very hectic January, we finally pushed through with the Flips Flipping Pages new year tradition: the Best and Worst discussion. Due to conflicting schedules, we had to push it down to the first week of February, but we had a grand time nonetheless, going over our best and worst reads for 2009 at the mezzanine level of National Bestsellers (thank you NBS!) in Robinson’s Galleria.

This is the second year we’ve done this sort of discussion — it’s basically a show and tell of our best and worst reads for the past year, starting off the year light before plunging into the subsequent book discussions of the year. And we’ve got a bunch of great discussions lined up, too — The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon this Feb. 20; High Fidelity by Nick Hornby in March; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in April; an artsy book in May; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin in June; comics and graphic novels in July; and some more interesting discussions lined up for the rest of the year.

What made it to the Flippers’ best and worst? Find out after the cut!

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Sherlock Holmes and Flippers, a.k.a. Who killed Czar?

sherlock

Last Friday night, I saw the Sherlock Holmes movie at the mall with my sibs.

(Note to Czar, who is probably reading this: yes, despite all my protests I ended up watching the movie.)

I wasn’t all that keen on watching the movie from the very first time I saw the trailer, which seemed too Hollywood-ized to me, and a few minutes into Sherlock Holmes, I found that I wasn’t wrong on that note.

With the rabble-rousing tandem of Sherlock Holmes (when he’s not raving manically) and Watson, a load of bromance and flashy action sequences, and a plot worthy of a Dan Brown novel, the film is certainly entertaining, but it comes off more like Sherlock Holmes fan fic rather than an adaptation of the beloved classic.

But this entry isn’t really about the movie… It’s about what happened at the Flips Flipping Pages Christmas Party!

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On book blogging

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find out I was a finalist to this year’s Philippine Blog Awards, an annual event in the Philippine blogging community that honors outstanding Filipino blogs and bloggers.

I knew I’d been nominated, but I never thought I’d make it as a finalist in the culture and arts category, as it’s only been ten months since I started book blogging, and hundreds of other blogs were nominated for the various blog categories nationwide.

Due to the nature of my work, I frequently encounter top bloggers who have carved out their names in their own niches, in the blogosphere, and even in mainstream media. I’ve always admired their devotion to developing new content for their blogs, and wished I had half as much dedication in me, although I never thought about actively blogging until this year.

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MIBF highlights

I can’t believe the 30th Manila International Book Fair is finally over, and that I have to count twelve whole months until the next one. I love this year’s book fair loot, and while a couple of specialty book stores sat this book fair out, I think it served well to highlight local publishers and smaller booksellers.

While I’ve been to the book fair almost every day of the event for five consecutive years, I must say that getting to share it with the readers of this blog has made this year’s book fair extra-special. I hope my posts were helpful to those attending the book fair, and to those away from Manila, I hope you got a peek into the book fair experience.

Here is one last post, with photos of other highlights of the five days of the MIBF.

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Some last minute book fair tips

One last day at the book fair, and if you havent gone to SMX for this paramount event yet, there‘s still time — it’s closing at 9pm for the last day.

Now, the last day of the book fair is a good time to go; for some it’s even the best day to catch it, as this is when the exhibitors bring out previously overlooked stock, or stock they’ve been reserving particularly for the last day, so you may see items that weren’t out on previous days.

Some exhibitors also prefer to let go of as much of their stock as they can rather than taking it all back to their warehouse, so watch out for price slashes. The last day is also when cutthroat competition sets in, especially for exhibitors carrying the same book — this year it appears to be Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol spotted in three different booths — so I am waiting to see if they’ll have a price war tomorrow (er later today).

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